DURHAM — When junior linebacker Shane McNeely turned around the last thing he expected to see was the ball coming toward at him.

“I took my drop and the ball was right there,” he said. “It was like, ‘hello, how you doing?’”

So the former high school tight end did what comes naturally. He caught the misguided pass from Colgate quarterback Dylan Spinelli and headed in the other direction.

McNeely returned his first career interception, which came on Colgate’s second play from scrimmage, 31 yards to the Raiders’ 4.

“I caught it and started running with the ball,” he said. “Unfortunately I didn’t get in the end zone.”

Two plays later, however, tight end Harold Spears did for the second time in less than two minutes and the UNH football team was well on its way to Saturday’s 53-23 victory at Cowell Stadium.

The Wildcats led 16-0 just over six minutes into the game.

They turned two interceptions into 15 points. Hayden Knudson had the other one, which he returned 29 yards to the Colgate 30 to set up Nico Steriti’s 5-yard touchdown run that made it 33-6 early in the second quarter.

“Those are things we work on in camp,” said coach Sean McDonnell. “We call it sudden change. Either the offense has to do something good after a turnover or the defense has to stop somebody. The kids have to respond to that.”

The Wildcats did just that after losing a fumble late in the first half. Colgate had the ball at the UNH 35, but the Wildcats held on fourth-and-6 and took over on downs.

Three plays later Steriti got loose for a 56-yard TD jaunt that made it 40-6 with 3:52 remaining in the first half.

UNH held the Raiders to 46 yards passing. Spinelli completed just 5 of 18 passes with two interceptions and one touchdown, which came with 3:24 left in the game.

Colgate managed 278 total yards, and averaged 3.9 yards per play compared to 7.3 for the Wildcats.

“I thought defensively we did a very good job of keeping the ball inside and in front of us for the most part,” McDonnell said. “Big interception by Shane to get the ball back in a hurry. We had a couple of good stops.”

A lot is expected of McNeely and sophomore linebacker Akil Anderson, who are trying to fill the shoes of the departed Matt Evans, the program’s all-time leading tackler, and Alan Buzbee, a three-year starter.

In addition to the interception, McNeely was in on a team-high eight tackles, including one and a half for a loss. He was also credited with half a sack and one pass defensed.

Anderson finished with four stops, including one for a loss, and a pass breakup. He also had a sack nullified when a teammate was penalized for a personal foul.

“I thought Shane did a decent job for us,” McDonnell said. “Him and Akil Anderson had a real big responsibility in this offense understanding how the ball was going to hit. They run a lot of misdirection and quarterback run plays, and their job is to fall back to make some plays and I thought they did a nice job doing it.”

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After redshirting last season and sitting out the first game this year with a sprained ankle, running back Dalton Crossan had a chance to showcase some of his moves Saturday.

He finished with 81 yards and one touchdown on seven carries in his college debut. He also caught one pass for 19 yards.

“He’s an explosive runner with great speed and great vision,” McDonnell said, “and he can catch.”

The Wildcats are thin at running back with Chris Setian and Jimmy Owens out with injuries.

“I knew I was going to have an opportunity to get on the field and get the ball,” Crossan said, “so over the summer and in spring ball I just worked real hard to prepare.”

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Although the Wildcats dominated, it wasn’t a perfect performance by any stretch. They muffed a punt and had a couple of big plays called back because of penalties.

UNH was penalized six times for 64 yards and turned the ball over twice.

“We’ve addressed that,” McDonnell said. “We talk about playing hard, we talk about playing with emotion, but we also talk about playing smart. These are things you can learn from. If we continue to do things like that it’ll end up like what happened last week — we’ll lose games.”